Chronicle Books

About Chronicle Books

Chronicle Books is an independent San Francisco publisher of illustrated books for adults and children and of gift products, founded in 1967 as an offshoot of the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper.

Phelps Dewey, an executive of the Chronicle Publishing Company, set it up in the Flood Building in downtown San Francisco. It was created to collect the work of the paper's columnists, among them Herb Caen and Stan Delaplane, and in its first few years most of its content came from the newspaper. A photographic cookbook, Sushi, in the early 1980s helped start its run of highly visual cookery books.

A children's list began in 1987. Nick Bantock's epistolary novel Griffin and Sabine (1991) led the firm into gift books and products. Other best sellers include The Beatles Anthology (2000), the Worst-Case Scenario series and Annie Barrows's Ivy and Bean books.

In 1999 Nion McEvoy, a great-grandson of Chronicle co-founder M. H. de Young, bought the company from family members who were selling off the group's assets, keeping it independent. It is owned through his McEvoy Group, a holding company set up in 2000 that also owns Princeton Architectural Press. By 2017 Chronicle was publishing close to 300 new titles a year, with staff in San Francisco, London and Tokyo.